


Tuesday

by leiascully



Category: House M.D.
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-09-25
Updated: 2007-09-25
Packaged: 2017-10-03 06:25:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 803
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Tuesday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tuesday

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: 5-10 years post-S3  
> A/N: Written for ficwriters_anon.  
> Disclaimer: _House M.D._ and all related characters are the property of Shore Z, Bad Hat Harry, and Fox. No profit is made from this work and no infringement is intended.

It's Tuesday.

Cameron wakes up and that's the first thought that floats across her mind. It's Tuesday. As if that ought to mean something. She lies in bed for a long few minutes, flexing her toes. Her bedroom has a wind-blasted look, the outlines of solid objects sifting away into bright nothingness like a dreamscape.

Where she works now, Tuesday doesn't mean a damn thing. It's a day like any other. She's free of all of them: Foreman's glower, Chase's slow grin, the way House's eyebrows puckered as he scowled. She's free of the click of Cuddy's heels and the shine on Wilson's French shoes. It's a sumptuous relief. She wiggles one finger at a time and presses the heels of her hands against the headboard so that her wrists show their blue veins to the ceiling. She can feel the pulse beat against her bones.

Outside, once she's showered and dressed, the air is crisp. Football season. She always follows the Patriots, because that's the team Joe and Brian used to love. She'd make popcorn and wedge herself between them (her boys, she always thought, wriggling until the points of her hip and shoulder pressed into their muscled sides). To distract herself from wanting to wrap her body around Joe's, she'd cheer extra-hard for the Pats, agreeing with the boys who were counting the yardage on each down, protesting flags. Then Brian got thinner and thinner and Joe seemed ever warmer and more alive, his elbow on her thigh where he was reaching for popcorn, and she started to love the Pats even though she didn't really know a damn thing about football, and she forgot it all after the funeral.

At the hospital (no glass walls, just big windows), she drags on scrubs and twists her hair up. For years she used to dream about the whiteboard and the conference room and that stupid red mug. But now, if she avoids the tap-tapping of canes in physical therapy, she's fine. An immunologist like she was always meant to be: a thousand scratch tests, but at least it's not life or death every other week. Now and again, she even diagnoses lupus. Her colleagues are genial. They have lives and families. Every spring they have a department picnic and everyone brings their kids. The head of Immunology is a grandmotherly lady who always calls Cameron "Allison" and threatens benignly to set Cameron up with her nephew the artist. "Live a little," she says indulgently. "He's not one of those men who thinks that steak is the end-all of meals." Cameron stretches her lips in a smile and promises to think it over.

She's put on ten pounds and she doesn't care. She isn't in her twenties anymore. Patients still have crushes on her. Men look at her in bars, and she can squeeze into the red dress when she needs to. Who was she trying to impress anyway? She's forgotten. She's got everything that matters. She's thinking of getting a dog.

Tuesday used to mean something and she's satisfied not to quite remember what, though sometimes she catches herself trying to stare through a wall.

She relents; the artist calls; they drink microbrews at 3.50 a pint on a Tuesday evening at a local bar. They don't talk about work. He's charming, unpretentious, genuinely interested. His eyes are brown and clear like root beer. When he smiles at her, her face warms, though she wouldn't call it a blush. It's not the heady burn of meth in her bones or the blazing sweetness of validation, but she enjoys herself. They go out again on a Thursday: dance lessons at a local bar. Fall turns into winter and she pages past dates of old significance without a flicker. Chase calls; they chat. She hangs up and feels happy.

She still wakes up and thinks, without warning, _Tuesday_, but the artist is warm in bed beside her, and she settles back against him and remembers it's Saturday instead. She is soft with happiness, the first wrinkles blurring the corners of her eyes.

There was a time she was certain of her edges: clean, perfect lines, an absolute definition of herself in the charged space around her. Now she is softer and the air is mild. The artist gives her a book of Frost and she reads: "Two roads diverged in a yellow wood and I, I took the one less traveled by." She shuts the book thoughtfully without marking the page, and sips black walnut tea from a red mug. She will go jogging today, on the paths beaten down by generations of feet, and she will not flinch toward the twisty path drifted with leaves. She'll know where she is and how to get home: that, she decides, is a welcome change.


End file.
